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Seems to me folks USED to reward honestly... now-a-days one gets punished for doing the right thing... Wonder why?

Side note: I ran a call late Thurs... long time customer getting married at her home (backyard) over the weekend. The elec at her house was acting up, and she has parties planned Friday, Saturday, and the Wedding Sunday. Went over there and fixed the issues... she gave me a 'c' note above and beyond the bill!

No, Did not get a tip. This woman was poor as dirt and im sure she had plans for the money.ie.food,medical bills,meds. Even if they did offer me some I would not have taken it. I do still work for the family that is still around here though. I have had another business along with this one and I got into that "more money is better" mindset. I lost the other business, lost a damn nice boat, luxury truck gone, but the worst thing I lost was a year working 14-18 hr days 7 days a week away from my wife and kids. So as long as I have enough to feed/cloth/live and a little to save im happy now. There is alot more to the story than there is space and time to write here. Nothing illegal just bad finical decisions along with bad timing and employees who have sticky fingers. Im home now between 4-5 most days, and I only go on emergency calls on weekends and nights (but I do charge 160.00 hr to do it, so it keeps the calls to a minimum.) I found out that I had rather be happy than rich.

The bad news... even just in a IRA or some relatively safe investment, it should have been worth what $100? $200K? if that really goes back 40 years. Inflation aloe at 3-4% would have tripled you money. Even if you don't trust the banks, you could have bought gold, diamonds, anything being better than paper money over that time period. Hard to explain that to many that were children during hte deperssion and "real" hard time. We don't know hard.

If he had taken just $5000 in 1950 and bought shares of a company called Haloid which is now called Xerox he would have $800,000 in stock today.

Recently I bought a house from one of my customers for $2000, it was a complete dump, the ex-resident was some crazy relative who was basically squatting in the place (he was found dead there too). All the utilities were shut off including water. You should have seen the toilets ickk! The good part of this story was that I found an antique pre WW1 working Calvary gun, $963 in cash and sold the contents lots of junktiques for $875. I didn't mention to my wife I was buying this dump, when she found out I was planning of using about $40k of our money to renovate the place, well, I decided to sell it. Two months later I got a check for $15k at settlement.

Now when I see a customer wring their hands over the need to buy a new heater, I ask if they might want to sell the place instead. Most of the time they have just told me how the place was a dump with constant repairs draining their bank account. Makes for a good spring board for a low offer.

You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour. Jim Rohn

Years ago I was completed with a service call, about to leave. Making small talk like a good tech does. Anyway this lady had an old secretariat desk, real similar to one my grandma had given to me. So we were talking about it and her Aunt had given her this one. I asked her if hers had the secret drawers, like the one I have. She said she didn't think so. So we opened up the desk area and I reached for the secret door and sure enough the two same secret doors. I opened up the first one just a little to show her, then closed it. Did the same to the second one and it wouldn't close back. Thought I broke it. So we pulled it out all the way and it was pretty full with Kennedy half dollars. We pulled out the first drawer and it was full of old two dollar bills. Pretty cool. She had no idea. NO TIP FOR ME THOUGH! All together it had $48.00 in it.

As iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another Proverbs 27:17 NIV84